INTERPRETATION AND EXPLANATION IN CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY

Continuing debates over the role of interpretation in history and social science have recently been linked to a program to develop a cultural sociology, as distinct from a sociology of culture. Apart from a defense of the importance of culture and meaning, this effort aims to develop a form of “interpretive explanation,” though not simply by following Max Weber's similar project from nearly one hundred years ago. The book under review looks at different “epistemic modes” that aim to produce social knowledge, in order to show how interpretive explanation can combine the best of all the modes. Unfortunately, the book is beset by numerous theoretical problems, including a problematical understanding of the relations of fact and theory, hasty criticisms of examples of the different modes, and a reliance on metaphors that makes it impossible to do justice to the issues. The project of what I would call a “thick explanation” is worthwhile, but will have to be pursued in a more nuanced and careful way.     

我国石质文物保护研究进展——基于国家自然科学基金资助项目的分析

基于对1990年至2016年间批准立项的国家自然科学基金中涉及石质文物保护研究项目的统计梳理,分别从资助项目时间分布、类别分布、分属学科分布、依托单位分布和研究队伍等方面分析了近来我国石质文物保护研究的学术轨迹,并从石质文物保护研究范围、研究方向、人才队伍建设等方面探讨了我国石质文物保护工作的重点和热点,同时对石质文物保护研究方向进行了评述与建议。为相关科研人员了解石质文物保护领域基础研究方向提供参考。     

Policies to promote employment and preserve cultural heritage in the handicraft sector

For many countries around the world, the handicraft sector has served as a means of maintaining and promoting cultural and artistic traditions. It has also been an important source of employment and income. However, the contributions of this sector to total employment and income are not well understood. In this paper, we present data on employment in the handicraft sector in a number of countries in the developing world. We find evidence that this sector employs over 10% of the labor force in many countries, and that further documentation of this employment is needed in order to design policies to maximize opportunities in this sector. We also identify policies that governments can undertake to preserve the cultural heritage embodied in handicrafts and to promote the export of these products. The importance of these policy recommendations is highlighted with the case of Peru, which has faced considerable import competition in the handicraft sector in recent years.     

Controversy,uncertainty and the diverse public in cultural diplomacy: Australia–China relations

In the past few years, foreign policy tensions between China and Australia have become especially fraught. In some cases, this political situation manifests in the very diplomatic initiatives that were funded to help ease relations. This article considers a case study of a theatrical collaboration in the context of contemporary Australia–China relations to interrogate the value of our understandings of and evaluation frameworks for public diplomacy. This article argues that theories of cultural diplomacy and assessments of initiatives need to consider the multiple and competing objectives, diverse publics and controversial receptions that may be the outcomes of cultural diplomatic initiatives. It demonstrates this complexity in relation to Australia–China relations. Taking a cultural diplomatic initiative that sought to increase positive association for Chinese culture in the Australian public as a case study, it illustrates the range of differences that can be found amongst stakeholders, and the different roles that may be ascribed to cultural diplomacy. These interests, including those of different artistic and political stakeholders, as well as differences in the publics involved, are best segmented not only according to nation but also to subculture.     

What is new and what is nationalist about Europe's new nationalism? Explaining the rise of the far right in Europe

Far‐right parties are on the rise across Europe. Their shared populist rhetoric, emphasis on sovereignty and policies that promote a ‘national preference’ has facilitated the term ‘the new nationalism’. According to an emerging consensus, this new nationalism is primarily a demand‐side phenomenon triggered by cultural grievances, i.e. a cultural backlash, driven by those on the wrong end of a new transnational cleavage. This explanation we argue tends to overlook important variations across countries and across time. As such, in this article, we contest the view that the ‘new nationalism’ is a linear and coherent phenomenon best understood as a cultural backlash. Specifically, our argument is threefold: (1) it is important to conceptually distinguish between populism, nationalism and the far right in order to draw meaningful conclusions about the extent to which this phenomenon is linear, coherent and comparable across cases; (2) voters' economic concerns remain pivotal within the context of the transnational cleavage, entailing that voting behaviour is structured by two dimensions of contestation; (3) the explanatory power of nationalism is in the supply, i.e. the ways in which parties use nationalism strategically in an attempt to broaden their appeal.     

Refining Broad-Scale Vulnerability Assessment of Coastal Archaeological Resources,Lough Foyle,Northern Ireland

Increasing evidence indicates that ongoing and future climate change impacts, such as enhanced coastal erosion driven by intensified storms and sea-level rise, will be destructive or problematic for coastal archaeological heritage. Approaches to this problem range from broad-scale GIS-based vulnerability assessments to site-scale monitoring and survey. In all cases, the approach chosen should be based on the best-available data on the local historic environment and pattern of coastal change. Therefore, this paper will demonstrate how such data can be successively acquired and enhanced using an integrated approach that builds on and refines a previously conducted broad-scale vulnerability assessment. This approach was adopted in the study region (Northern Ireland) owing to a lack of coherent and up-to-date information on shoreline change. This approach incorporated the GIS-based Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) to quantify and analyze local shoreline change. DSAS is a software extension for ESRI ArcGIS which allows calculation of rate-of-change statistics using past shorelines identified from georeferenced historic maps and vertical aerial imagery. Additionally, a field survey was conducted to assess the condition of recorded sites, and identify unrecorded ones. Results revealed a more complex pattern of shoreline change in the study area (Magilligan Foreland, Lough Foyle) than previously anticipated, with zones of significant erosion interspersed with areas of stability or advance. Fifty-one new sites ranging from the prehistoric period to the Second World War were also identified. The new information was used to develop a priority classification based on site significance, condition and risk level which improved significantly on the uniform classification of the original broad-scale assessment.     

Hunters and gatherers past and present: Perspectives on diversity,teaching, and information transmission

This article reviews four books on hunters and gatherers. It begins with a discussion of the debates over the concept of hunter-gatherers. Theoretical approaches to hunter-gather studies are examined briefly. The view then assesses the four books and the various subjects which they address. These subjects include the issue of ethnographic analogy, diversity, evolution, and archaeological perspectives as well as understanding contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Additional topics include land use, the assignment of meaning to landscapes, way finding, territoriality, boundary-marking, and networks. Social learning, teaching, and information dissemination are discussed, with emphasis on some of the things that are learned, such as sharing, fair treatment of others, the importance of compassion, and moral values. Hunter-gatherer studies have evolved to the point where both archaeologists and anthropologists are taking into careful consideration the need to consider both past and present in their investigations and to focus also on the non-hunter-gatherer societies with whom they are interacting. As people who defined themselves as indigenous, hunter-gatherers are well aware of the social, economic, environmental and political challenges that they are facing, and they are seeking to address these challenges along with support organizations and researchers in an attempt to ensure their long-term security and well-being.     

Sentiment,Sensation and Sensibility: Adam Smith,Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis and Wilhelm von Humboldt

Summary

This article focuses on the analysis of sensibility in the works of three major late eighteenth-century philosophers: Smith, Cabanis and the young Wilhelm von Humboldt. It analyses to what extent Smith's concept of sympathy influenced Cabanis in France and Humboldt in Germany. It argues that modern anthropology, based on a specific theory of sensibility, assumes a strong connection between knowledge acquisition and life in society. This article reveals the strong links between the three authors which were made possible precisely because of their common philosophical background. It proves, for the first time, that Humboldt had access to Condillac's ideas before 1798, since in an early work on the state, the former makes numerous borrowings from speeches Cabanis wrote for Mirabeau, which were in turn strongly influenced by Condillac.     

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY'S RETURN

Kojin Karatani's Structure of World History seeks to rescue the philosophy of history and restore to it the relationship between philosophical reflection and historical practice. This connection is particularly pertinent in Karatani's case since he had earlier worked out the philosophical scaffolding of this monumental study in his book Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, which embarked on a “return to Capital once more to read the potential that has been overlooked.” By juxtaposing Marx to Kant and vice versa to discover the importance of exchange over production, he found what was to become the informing principle of his later philosophy of history. While Karatani's accounting of the structure of world history presumes to recount the passage of the world's history from nomadic societies to the present as a condition to rethink “social formations” from a perspective that recalls the form of a stagist philosophy of history attributed to Marx and Engels, he has abandoned its informing principle of the modes of production. Instead, he offers the perspective of modes of exchange, which means waiving any consideration concerning who owns the means of production: the putative “economic base” underlying superstructural representations like the state, religion, and culture upheld by a vulgate tradition of Marxian historical writing and discounted by bourgeois historiography as deterministic. The decision to shift to modes of exchange means rooting the primary mode of exchange taking place first in nomadic societies, rather than forms of production and archaic communal ownership of land. Although his revised scheme still accords priority to the economic, the putative division between base and superstructures still persists, even though the latter are still produced by the former, which is now the mode of exchange. Whereas Marx privileged commodity exchange as dominant, Karatani places greater emphasis on the earliest mode of exchange, which consists of the “pure gift,” associated with early nomadic social formations and reciprocity practices by clans, and seems to offer nomadic/clan communalism as a model that resembles Marx's own strategic linking of the surviving Russian commune and contemporary capitalism. The point to this project is to transcend the hegemonic trinity of capital, nation, and state and satisfy a desire to share with other globalists a vision that aims to overcome the defects of capitalism and the nation‐state and the failure of a Marxian expectation that nation‐states will simply wither away with the final surpassing of capitalism. To this end, Karatani's appeal to Kant offers to inject a moral element absent in the merely economic structure of history that will thus provide the promise of “world peace,” which ultimately requires an abolition of the nation‐state as a condition for realizing a “simultaneous bourgeois revolution” that would finally overcome state and capital and establish a world federation.     

Short-term study abroad: culture and the path of least resistance

American universities are decreasing the length of study abroad programs in an effort to send more students abroad. Recent publications find that “short-term” programs struggle to increase participants’ cultural understanding. However, these research findings fail to offer an explanation as to why shorter programs are falling short. This study suggests that “culture traveling the path of least resistance” is one of the main inhibitors to students’ cultural understanding. Conclusions are based on participant observation, focus group, and semi-structured interview data gathered from two short-term programs. It is concluded that pre-trip and while-abroad activities must be administered in order to allay “least resistance.”